DeSantis, Ron

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Takes Fight for Second Place to Nikki Haley’s Home State

      by

      After ignoring each other for much of the campaign, the two candidates now engage in near-daily attacks and have sparred with increasing intensity on the debate stage.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Friday swept through South Carolina, his rival Nikki Haley’s backyard, seeking to blunt the rise of the state’s former governor in the Republican primary while capitalizing on his slugfest with the Democratic governor of California.The fight to claim the mantle of the most viable Republican alternative to former President Donald J. Trump intensified this week. Ms. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, won the endorsement of the political network founded by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch and secured the backing of key donors like Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. The upheaval in Mr. DeSantis’s campaign apparatus continued unabated on Friday with the departure of his super PAC’s chairman, Adam Laxalt.But Mr. DeSantis’s prime-time face-off on Fox News with Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday night seemed to buoy him as he barnstormed through South Carolina’s Upstate region near Greenville and its midsection outside Columbia before ending in Charleston and the Lowcountry.On Ms. Haley’s home turf, the Florida governor and his surrogates appeared unfazed by all the developments, blasting the support from Mr. Dimon as a nod from a Hillary Clinton supporter and dismissing the Koch network’s decision as evidence that Ms. Haley represents only the incremental change backed by Wall Street.“I don’t know what you could say about her tenure as governor here, but I’ve never heard of any major accomplishment that she had,” Mr. DeSantis told a town hall in Greer, S.C. “And I don’t think she’s shown a willingness to fight for you when it’s tough. It’s easy when the wind’s at your back.”Mr. DeSantis and his team have long cast the Republican nominating contest as a two-man race between him and Mr. Trump. But Ms. Haley’s rise in the polls and her successful drawing in of big-money donors have punctured that notion. After ignoring each other for much of the summer and the early fall, the two candidates now engage in near-daily attacks and have sparred with increasing intensity on the debate stage.They and their allied super PACs have clashed on a sometimes bewildering variety of fronts, from standard disputes over subjects like the strength of their conservative bona fides to more niche topics like dissecting each other’s records on recruiting Chinese businesses in their home states. Fact checkers have rated many of their attacks as false or misleading.Mr. DeSantis has been especially aggressive. On Fox News this week, he called Ms. Haley an “establishment” politician who was “fundamentally out of step with Republican voters” on core conservative issues, including immigration, where she has called for more legal pathways to recruit foreign workers. His campaign set up a website that accuses Ms. Haley of supporting “every liberal cause under the sun.”The Florida governor has also falsely claimed that Ms. Haley wanted to bring Gazan refugees to the United States. And he has mounted attacks on past statements by Ms. Haley that have sometimes mirrored his own, including her expression of sympathy after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. (Mr. DeSantis said at the time that he was “appalled” by Mr. Floyd’s death.) He has also criticized Ms. Haley for saying in 2016 that her state did not need a law banning transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice, even though Mr. DeSantis had said during his first run for governor in 2018 that “getting into bathroom wars” was not “a good use of our time.”In addition, Mr. DeSantis’s allies have established a new super PAC to attack Ms. Haley in Iowa. Last month, the group, Fight Right, produced a misleading ad showing clips of Ms. Haley praising Hillary Clinton. The clips had been edited to excise her simultaneous criticisms of Mrs. Clinton.The Haley campaign counterpunched with an ad of its own called “Desperate Campaigns Do Desperate Things.”As Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis joust for second place, Mr. Trump’s position in the Republican primaries, even in South Carolina, remains dominant. Mr. DeSantis may have been willing to call out Ms. Haley by name in her home state, but he continued to tiptoe around the former president using the passive voice.On Friday, for instance, he insisted he could get Mexico to pay for the rest of a border wall.“I know that was promised — it didn’t happen,” he said, without naming the promiser, Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis also failed to identify that same promiser when he said: “We were promised we’d be tired of winning. Unfortunately, as a Republican, I’m tired of losing.”He was less reluctant when a voter asked about Ms. Haley’s suggestion last month that social media platforms verify all users and ban people from posting anonymously. Mr. DeSantis and others had criticized her comments as unconstitutional and a threat to free speech.“What Haley said was outrageous,” Mr. DeSantis responded, adding, “Honestly, it’s disqualifying.”In an interview on Fox News, Ms. Haley responded to Mr. DeSantis’s recent critiques about her record as governor.“Well, I think he went after my record as governor because he’s losing,” Ms Haley said. “I mean, who else can spend a hundred million dollars and drop half in the polls?”For some in South Carolina, Ms. Haley’s tenure — from 2011 to 2017 — is beginning to feel like a long time ago. Tim Vath, 54, who moved to Greer toward the end of Ms. Haley’s second term, found the support from the Koch network “questionable.” Suzanne Garrison, also 54 and from Greer, raised the specter of backroom politicking and suggested that Ms. Haley had not always followed through in implementing conservative policies.“I wish more people knew the real Nikki Haley,” said Ms. Garrison, a DeSantis supporter. “I just don’t trust her.”But in the tiny town of Prosperity, outside Columbia, the crowd was more mixed. Cathy Huddle, 61, of Chapin, S.C., said Ms. Haley’s accomplishments as governor “pale in comparison” to the wholesale conservative changes wrought by Mr. DeSantis in Florida.But Alice and Robert Tenny appeared unmoved by Mr. DeSantis’s pitch. Both said Ms. Haley’s experience at the United Nations gave her global knowledge and stature. And Mr. Tenny, 69, found Mr. DeSantis’s gloating over his performance against Mr. Newsom to be off-putting.“We’re kind of getting ahead of ourselves if we’re sitting down with the governor of a different party” before the first primaries, Mr. Tenny said. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Super PAC Suffers Another Big Staff Loss, This Time Its Chairman

      by

      The departure of Adam Laxalt, a longtime friend of the Florida governor, is the latest shake-up inside Never Back Down as it faces questions over the group’s strategy and spending.The main super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign has been rocked by another significant departure, as Adam Laxalt, a friend and former roommate of the Florida governor, has stepped down as chairman of the group.Mr. Laxalt, who unsuccessfully ran to become a Republican senator in Nevada in 2022, lived with Mr. DeSantis when he was training as a naval officer. He joined Never Back Down in April, soon after his own campaign ended and before Mr. DeSantis officially joined the presidential race, in a move that was widely seen as Mr. DeSantis and his wife seeking to have someone they trusted monitoring the activities of the well-funded group. He also suffered the unexpected death of his mother over the summer, a friend said.“After nearly 26 straight months of being in a full-scale campaign, I need to return my time and attention to my family and law practice,” Mr. Laxalt wrote in a letter to the board on Nov. 26 that was reviewed by The New York Times. He said in the note that he was still committed to Mr. DeSantis’s becoming president.The departure represents the second major departure from Never Back Down in the last two weeks. On the eve of Thanksgiving, the group’s chief executive, Chris Jankowski, resigned. In a statement put out by the group after the resignation, Mr. Jankowski said that his differences at the group went “well beyond” strategic arguments, without explaining more.It was Mr. Laxalt who announced that Kristin Davison, previously the chief operating officer, would replace Mr. Jankowski in an email that evening. “We look forward to hitting the ground running with all of you after the holiday,” Mr. Laxalt wrote.But now Mr. Laxalt is gone, as well.With the Iowa caucuses less than seven weeks away, people associated with the DeSantis campaign encouraged the creation of a new outside group called Fight Right to take over negative attacks on his closest competition in the nomination contest, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      What a Petty Pair DeSantis and Newsom Made

      by

      It’s remarkable how fixated Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom have been on each other. It’s weird. These two opposite-party governors from opposite coasts of the country have been sparring — repeatedly, haughtily, naughtily — for more than two years. If their debate on Thursday night had been the climactic scene in a Hollywood rom-com, Newsom would have left his lectern, marched purposefully over to DeSantis, cut him off mid-insult and swept him into his arms, the tension between them revealed as equal parts ideological and erotic.That, alas, was not how the event played out. While I occasionally detected a spark in each man’s eyes — cocksure recognizes cocksure and has a grudging respect for it — I more often winced at the strychnine in their voices. Their loathing is sincere. It was there at the start of the debate, when DeSantis, in the first minute of his remarks, managed to mention Newsom’s infamously hypocritical pandemic dinner at the French Laundry. It was there in the middle, when DeSantis brought up the French Laundry again.And, oh, how it was there in Newsom’s wicked mockery of DeSantis’s plummeting promise as a presidential candidate. He noted that he and DeSantis had something “in common,” alluding to the fact that he himself is not making a White House bid. “Neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.”Newsom didn’t stop there, later saying that DeSantis was pathetically trying to “out-Trump Trump.” “By the way,” he quickly added, “how is that going for you, Ron? You’re down 41 points in your own home state.” And later still, for good measure: “When are you going to drop out and at least give Nikki Haley a shot to take down Donald Trump and this nomination?”Soon, I hope. But that didn’t mean the question was a good look for Newsom — or a good look for America.That was my problem with the Florida and California governors, as well as their face-off, which took place on a stage in Alpharetta, Ga., and was moderated by Sean Hannity and televised live by Fox News. While the gov-on-gov action was billed as a battle of red-state and blue-state worldviews and governing agendas, of the Republican way and the Democratic way, it became even more of a mirror of just how little quarter each side will give the other, how little grace it will show, how spectacularly it fails at constructive and civil dialogue, how profoundly and quickly it descends into pettiness.There was substance, yes — more than at the three Republican presidential debates — but it wasn’t broached honestly and maturely. It was instead an opportunity for selective statistics, flamboyant evasions, quipping, posturing. Each of these self-regarding pols kept altering the angle of his stance, shifting the altitude of his chin, changing his smile from caustic to complacent. It was as if they were rearranging their egos.And the dishonesty extended to Hannity, who front-loaded and stacked the roughly 90 minutes with Republicans’ favorite talking points and their preferred attacks on President Biden. There wasn’t a whisper from Hannity about abortion or DeSantis’s support of a six-week ban until 65 minutes into the event, nor did Hannity press the two candidates on matters of democracy, on the rioting of Jan. 6, 2021, on Trump’s attacks on invaluable American institutions, on his flouting of the rule of law.Those issues have immeasurable importance, but they took a back seat to border security, crime, tax rates and Americans’ movement to red states from blue ones. Fox News’s real agenda was to make Newsom’s defense of the Biden administration look like a lost cause. The cable network failed to do so, because Newsom is too forceful a brawler and too nimble a dancer to let that happen.He persuasively described DeSantis as the personification of right-wing, red-state stinginess and spitefulness. DeSantis punishingly cast Newsom as left-wing, blue-state profligacy in the flesh. One exchange late in the debate perfectly captured that dynamic.Feigning charitableness, DeSantis acknowledged: “California does have freedoms that some people don’t, that other states don’t. You have the freedom to defecate in public in California. You have the freedom to pitch a tent on Sunset Boulevard. You have the freedom to create a homeless encampment under a freeway and even light it on fire.” His litany went on.Newsom exuberantly countered it. “I love the rant on freedom,” he said sarcastically. “I mean, here’s a guy who’s criminalizing teachers, criminalizing doctors, criminalizing librarians and criminalizing women who seek their reproductive care.” All excellent points and all reasons, beyond the kinder climate, that I’d pilot my U-Haul toward California before Florida.But neither of the two governors left his analysis there. Just seconds later, they were trading taunts and talking over each other, as they had the whole night, during which each called the other a liar or something akin to it dozens of times.“You’re nothing but a bully,” Newsom said, switching up the slurs.“You’re a bully,” DeSantis shot back. I braced for an “I’m rubber, you’re glue” coda. In its place, I got the indelible image of DeSantis holding up a map that apparently charted the density of human feces in various areas of San Francisco.Neither of them won the debate. Haley did, because nothing about DeSantis’s screechy performance is likely to reverse her recent ascent into a sort of second-place tie with him in the Republican primary contest. Gretchen Whitmer did, because Newsom’s pungent smugness no doubt made many viewers more curious about the Michigan governor than about him as a Democratic prospect in 2028.By agreeing to this grim encounter, Newsom and DeSantis implicitly presented themselves as de facto leaders of their respective parties, with a relative youthfulness — Newsom is 56, and DeSantis is 45 — that distinguishes them from the actual leaders of their parties: Biden, 81, and Trump, 77.But leadership wasn’t what they displayed, and what they modeled was the boastful, belligerent manner in which most political disagreements are hashed out these days, an approach that yields more heat than light. “We have never been this divided,” Hannity proclaimed at the start, referring to the country, and just about every subsequent minute exhaustingly and depressingly bore out that assessment.The scariest part of all was when Hannity raised the possibility of extending the event by half an hour. The disagreeable governors agreed, proving that they had two other things in common: an appetite for attention and an itch to squabble.And the happiest part? When Hannity didn’t follow through on that threat. We’d all witnessed squabbling enough.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni).The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis-Newsom Debate: What We Learned and Key Takeaways

      by

      Ron DeSantis showed a feistier side, using a friendly moderator to go on offense. Gavin Newsom defended California and President Biden, and jabbed right back.For an hour and a half on Thursday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California shouted at and interrupted each other, trying to leave an impression on Fox News viewers beyond the din of their slugfest.The debate in Alpharetta, Ga., was a chance for Mr. DeSantis to hold the spotlight without other candidates for the Republican presidential nomination on the stage. It was a chance for Mr. Newsom to bring his smooth persona and quick wit to a national — and conservative — audience.Here are five takeaways.It was DeSantis and Hannity vs. Newsom and Biden.The debate’s moderator, Sean Hannity, wanted the night to be a showdown between the liberal governor of the most populous state in the nation and the conservative governor of the third most populous state over starkly different views of governance.From the beginning, Mr. Hannity pressed Mr. Newsom on his state’s high tax rates, its loss of residents over the past two years and its relatively higher crime rate. And Mr. DeSantis backed up the moderator in his challenges to how California is run.It was an odd, mismatched conversation, since Mr. Newsom, who is not running for president, tried hard to focus on the 2024 campaign in which Mr. DeSantis is currently running. Mr. Newsom talked up President Biden’s record on the economy, health care and immigration and took swipes at Mr. DeSantis’s flagging campaign in the face of former President Donald J. Trump’s dominance.“We have one thing in common: Neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024,” Mr. Newsom said early in the debate, only to follow later with a left hook about Mr. Trump’s polling lead in Florida. “How’s that going for you, Ron?” he taunted. “You’re down 41 points in your own state.”An exasperated Mr. Hannity asked Mr. Newsom at one point: “Is Joe Biden paying you tonight? I thought this was state versus state.”DeSantis was far feistier than in the Republican debates.Mr. DeSantis showed more assertiveness on Thursday night than he has onstage at the Republican presidential debates. Fox NewsThrough three Republican primary debates, Mr. DeSantis has struggled to make an impression on a crowded stage with several deft campaigners. On Thursday night, a different Mr. DeSantis was onstage.He kept Mr. Newsom on his heels for much of the night. With Mr. Hannity’s help, he hit Mr. Newsom on subject after subject: crime, immigration, taxes, education.And he appeared prepared. When Mr. Newsom predictably brought up Mr. DeSantis’s fruitless war with Disney, the Florida governor didn’t defend his actions but went after his California counterpart over his Covid policies: “You had Disney closed inexplicably for more than a year,” he said.Newsom was determined to take down DeSantis’s 2024 campaign.If Mr. DeSantis wanted to take the sheen off the Golden State, Mr. Newsom seemed determined to bury Mr. DeSantis’s White House aspirations. The Californian was definitive in dismissing speculation that he was running for president, and was just as definitive in saying the Floridian was going nowhere.“Joe Biden will be our nominee in a matter of weeks,” Mr. Newsom said before adding of Mr. DeSantis, “In a matter of weeks, he will be endorsing Donald Trump.”It was not a one-off jab. Mr. Newsom told his onstage rival that “Donald Trump laid you out” on Florida’s initial Covid restrictions. He accused Mr. DeSantis of caving to the far right in lifting the restrictions and allowing tens of thousands of Floridians to die.Mr. Newsom invoked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and one of Mr. DeSantis’s competitors for the Republican nomination, when he said the Florida governor opposed fracking.“You were celebrated by the Sierra Club for that action until you weren’t,” he said.To conclude the debate, Newsom stuck in the knife: “When are you going to drop out and give Nikki Haley a chance to take on Donald Trump?” he asked. “She laid you out.”A debate watch party at an event space in San Francisco.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesSean Hannity, a neutral moderator? Fuhgeddaboudit.As the debate began, Mr. Hannity allowed that he was a conservative, but stipulated that as a moderator, he would be fair and nonpartisan.About an hour later, he began one question with this assertion: “Joe Biden has experienced significant cognitive decline.”Fair he wasn’t.Protestations aside, Mr. Hannity didn’t even try to be evenhanded. Again and again, he served up softballs to Mr. DeSantis, while shutting down Mr. Newsom’s attempts to defend himself.And he trotted out a series of well-prepared graphics to show Florida in the best possible light, and California in the worst: on education, crime, tax rates and population loss and gain. Mr. Newsom tried to rebut those graphics, but all Mr. DeSantis had to do was turn to the graphics to say the Californian was a slick spinmeister.Despite Newsom’s efforts, Biden had a tough night.The California governor wanted to shine a rosy light on Mr. Biden’s record before a Fox News audience unused to hearing anything positive about the president.Inflation was down to 3.2 percent, he noted. Wage growth had topped 4 percent, and economic growth in the last quarter was a blistering 5.2 percent, he said, adding, “Those are facts you don’t hear on Fox News.”But in a two-on-one fight, those facts probably didn’t get through, especially when both the moderator and the Florida governor were double-teaming Mr. Newsom on their repeated assertions of the president’s cognitive decline. Mr. Newsom did not come up with a particularly good defense on the matter, though he did say he would take Mr. Biden at 100 years old over Mr. DeSantis at any age in the White House.Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Hannity also teamed up on the dangers of an uncontrolled border, and when Mr. Newsom tried to hit Mr. DeSantis on having gladly taken money from Mr. Biden’s signature achievements, including millions of dollars from the law he signed to promote a domestic semiconductor industry and revive commercial science, Mr. Hannity just moved the conversation along. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis to Debate Newsom at a Tenuous Time in His 2024 Campaign

      by

      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is accustomed to crushing Democrats in his home state.He romped to a re-election victory last year over a weak Democratic opponent, as Republicans also picked up supermajorities in the State Legislature. Since he became governor, Republican voter registration numbers have surged statewide, leapfrogging those of Democrats, who traditionally held the edge.But on Thursday Mr. DeSantis will face something new: a brash, confident Democrat, in the form of his California counterpart, Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a debate this evening on Fox News. Mr. Newsom, who has feuded with Mr. DeSantis for years, has recently been sharpening his attacks, preparing for the encounter with appearances on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. (Mr. Hannity is set to moderate the debate.)For Mr. DeSantis, taking on Mr. Newsom is fraught with risks at a time when his presidential campaign seems to be gasping for air. While Mr. Newsom has little to lose from a poor showing — he is not running for anything, few Democrats are likely to be watching Fox News, and he has plenty of time to live down any missteps — Mr. DeSantis is fighting for his survival as a serious Republican contender.Having boastfully agreed to the matchup with Mr. Newsom, Mr. DeSantis now would seem to need to live up to the expectations that he has set for himself, by landing devastating rhetorical blows on the Californian, or at least by reaping a triumphant exchange or two that he can display to his social-media followers with pride. Should he come away embarrassed, by contrast, it would fuel his rivals’ arguments that he was a better candidate on paper than he has shown himself to be in real life.“Unless DeSantis does great, it will be more of the same narrative that he’s underperforming,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist. Still, Mr. Murphy said, given the state of the race, Mr. DeSantis could use the exposure. “There’s nowhere to go but up,” he said.Although Mr. DeSantis entered the nomination contest as the strongest challenger to former President Donald J. Trump, he is now fighting former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina for second place. His personal mannerisms have been picked apart on the campaign trail and the debate stage. And the well-funded super PAC that was supposed to bolster his campaign has been splintered by infighting, leading to the resignation of the group’s chief executive.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Fascism.

      by

      To spend more than a little time toggling between news sites of different bents is to notice a fierce debate over the American economy right now. Which matters more — the easing of inflation or the persistence of prices that many people can’t afford or accept? Low unemployment or high interest rates? Is the intensity of Americans’ bad feelings about the economy a sane response or a senseless funk estranged from their actual financial circumstances?On such questions may the 2024 election turn, so the litigation of them is no surprise. It’s not just the economy, stupid. It’s the public relations war over it.But never in my adult lifetime has that battle seemed so agonizingly beside the point, such a distraction from the most important questions before us. In 2024, it’s not the economy. It’s the democracy. It’s the decency. It’s the truth.I’m not talking about what will influence voters most. I’m talking about what should. And I write that knowing that I’ll be branded an elitist whose good fortune puts him out of touch with the concerns of people living paycheck to paycheck or priced out of housing and medical care. I am lucky — privileged, to use and own the word of the moment — and I’m an imperfect messenger, as blinded by the peculiarities of his experience in the world as others are by theirs.But I don’t see any clear evidence that a change of presidents would equal an uptick in Americans’ living standards. And 2024, in any case, isn’t shaping up to be a normal election with normal stakes or anything close to that, at least not if Donald Trump winds up with the Republican presidential nomination — the likeliest outcome, to judge by current conditions. Not if he’s beaten by a Republican who had to buy into his fictions or emulate his ugliness to claim the prize. Not if the Republican Party remains hostage to the extremism on display in the House over these past few months.That assessment isn’t Trump derangement syndrome. It’s straightforward observation, consistent with Liz Cheney’s new memoir, “Oath and Honor,” at which my Times colleague Peter Baker got an advance peek. Cheney describes House Republicans’ enduring surrender to Trump as cowardly and cynical, and she’s cleareyed on what his nomination in 2024 would mean. “We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic,” she writes. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis-Newsom Debate: What to Watch for at Tonight’s Showdown

      by

      The stakes are high for the governor of Florida as his polling sags fewer than seven weeks out from the Iowa caucuses.Call it the “Debate Me Please” showdown.Ron DeSantis of Florida, 45, and Gavin Newsom of California, 56, two relatively youthful governors adept at seeking — and finding — the spotlight, will square off at 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday in a nationally televised debate in Alpharetta, Ga., in suburban Atlanta. Both pleaded for this matchup, and now they have it.Each has an agenda, both near-term and further out, as well as political challenges that they hope to address during their 90-minute encounter. Mr. DeSantis, the Republican, needs to lift his campaign for president a week ahead of the fourth Republican primary debate and under seven weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Mr. Newsom, the Democrat, needs to lift the fortunes of his president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and prove in the short run that he is a team player, and in the medium term that his appeal can reach beyond the liberal enclaves of the West Coast.With Donald J. Trump still holding wide leads in the Republicans’ 2024 nominating contests, and Mr. Biden resolute on standing for re-election, both men could also be eyeing the 2028 presidential race, though neither would admit it. They have presented themselves as the fresh, new avatars of their respective ideologies and, potentially, the future of their political parties. Now, after they have used each other as foils for years, the debate could offer a culmination to their long-running public feud.Here is what to watch.The higher stakes for DeSantisMr. DeSantis has much more riding on this moment than his verbal sparring partner.The first three Republican presidential debates featured jam-packed stages, some verbal brawling, often involving the 38-year-old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and not a lot of Mr. DeSantis. Thursday night will be one-on-one, and with a friendly moderator, Sean Hannity, for the Republican on the stage.Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have sagged, leading him to seek exposure at every opportunity, including the debate against Mr. Newsom. Now Mr. DeSantis, who once preferred to ensconce himself in the friendly bubble of conservative media, has become almost a regular on mainstream broadcast networks.He has also repeatedly challenged his main rivals for the Republican nomination to debate him, hoping to generate momentum and attention, although his performances onstage so far have done little to change the dynamics of the race. But Mr. Trump has refused to appear at the G.O.P. debates, saying they were not worth his time given his lead in the polls. And former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who has caught up with or overtaken Mr. DeSantis in many early-state polls and has been busy building support among influential Republican donors, declined his recent offer of a one-on-one matchup.Voters in Iowa go to the caucuses Jan. 15 to cast the first ballots of the primary season. Mr. DeSantis has nailed down the coveted endorsements of the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, and an influential evangelical leader, Bob Vander Plaats. Now he has to win over more Republican voters if he hopes to catch Mr. Trump and buoy his campaign ahead of more difficult primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina.There will not be a partisan audience to influence viewer perceptions, but Mr. Newsom’s camp fully expects Mr. Hannity to unlevel the playing field: “We’re under no illusions; this is going to be a two-on-one match with the ref in the bag for the home team,” said Nathan Click, a Newsom spokesman.If the moderator keeps the Democrat on the defensive over policy, Mr. DeSantis could use the 90 minutes on Fox to combat his awkward, remote and sometimes canned image. DeSantis supporters say it’s a moment for him to highlight the stakes for the Republican Party in a debate not over marginal policy differences between Republicans, like the primary debates, but over starkly different visions of the future. If he can best Mr. Newsom, he can bask in the victory of a unified party, if only for one night.“Ron DeSantis will take this responsibility seriously and looks forward to sharing the stark contrast between his vision to revive our nation and Newsom’s blueprint for failure,” said Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, James Uthmeier.A top Biden surrogate seizing the spotlightIn political circles, it goes without saying that California’s governor has his eyes on the highest office in the land.“It’s very obvious that he is running for president right now,” said Jessica Patterson, the chairwoman of the California Republican Party. “He elevates himself to a national level when he tries to punch up to Ron DeSantis. Every opportunity he gets to be on the national stage, he goes for it.”Maybe so, but as long as Mr. Biden is seeking re-election, Mr. Newsom’s job on that stage is to defend the president’s record. Nothing else would lift Mr. Newsom in the eyes of his own party more than his help keeping a Democrat in the White House next year — and Mr. Trump out.But to be a credible surrogate, Mr. Newsom cannot come off as an elite, West Coast liberal out of touch with the concerns of voters in key swing states far from California, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.Can Hannity keep the focus on policy?Mr. Hannity sees the showdown not as a stand-in for a presidential debate but as a chance for the governors of the first and third largest states in the nation to defend and showcase the very different policies governing those states.“I think both governors really have an opportunity to present their political philosophy and ideology, why they govern the way they do,” he said in an interview.They would have much to discuss: Florida’s low-tax, growing economy versus California’s dominance in fields like technology and electric vehicles but struggles against Republican states poaching its businesses; university systems with divergent approaches to political speech and influence; California’s hands-on approach to climate change, including an eventual ban on internal combustion engines, versus Florida’s laissez-faire attitude even as it is battered by stronger, more frequent hurricanes and coastal flooding.Mr. DeSantis has relished talking up his record in Florida. He often brags about how many California residents are moving to Florida, claiming that Mr. Newsom’s “leftist” policies are responsible. Mr. DeSantis once said that Mr. Newsom had treated Californians like “peasants” during the coronavirus pandemic. He filmed a campaign ad in San Francisco that painted the city as a kind of dystopia, with Mr. DeSantis saying he had seen people using drugs and “defecating on the street.”Mr. Newsom has also not held back. During Mr. DeSantis’s re-election campaign, he ran a pointed ad on Florida airwaves criticizing Mr. DeSantis’s policies and recently ran another attacking the six-week abortion ban signed by the Florida governor. He has called Mr. DeSantis “weak” and “undisciplined” and said he would get “crushed” by Mr. Trump in the G.O.P. primary. After Mr. DeSantis sent planeloads of migrants from the southern border to Sacramento this year, Mr. Newsom suggested his Florida counterpart could face kidnapping charges, calling him a “small, pathetic man.”Mr. Newsom still sees the evening as “a way to showcase and put more scrutiny on Mr. DeSantis’s brand of authoritarianism,” Mr. Click said.But both men have said their more pressing objective for this debate is the White House, not the state house.“We’re focused on defending the president and contrasting the president’s record with Ron DeSantis’s record of taking away fundamental freedoms that we have come to take for granted over the last 50 years,” Mr. Click said, tallying off abortion, free speech and the right to vote.Location, location, locationThe Newsom camp has made much of the California governor’s willingness to venture into hostile territory and bring his message to Republican voters. And just a decade ago, the northern reaches of Fulton County, Ga., where the debate is being held, qualified as such.Not anymore. Most of North Fulton has turned Democratic in the last eight years, as its citizenry has diversified and many suburban Republicans have recoiled at the party’s direction under the leadership of Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump eked out a win in the ZIP code where the debate will be held, though his margin slipped by nearly 5 percentage points. But all around that 30005 ZIP code are blue stretches, a testament to Georgia’s arrival on the national stage as a true presidential battlefield.Both camps said they wanted the debate in Georgia (Mr. DeSantis will be campaigning on Friday in South Carolina next door). Fox News chose the venue, a battleground within a battleground.Adam Nagourney More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Top Ramaswamy Aide Resigns to Join the Trump Campaign

      by

      The aide, Brian Swensen, had been focused on building Vivek Ramaswamy’s New Hampshire operation.Vivek Ramaswamy’s national political director is switching Republican teams and heading to former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign.The political director, Brian Swensen, has resigned and plans to join Mr. Trump’s re-election effort, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy said on Wednesday. The news was first reported by The Messenger.The move came as Mr. Ramaswamy, whose campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination has plateaued in the polls, is barnstorming the early primary states in the final weeks before the start of the primary season in Iowa and New Hampshire in January. Mr. Swensen was with Mr. Ramaswamy in New Hampshire over the weekend. In the coming weeks, he will assist with the Trump campaign’s operation in Nevada ahead of the state’s caucuses in February. Tricia McLaughlin, the Ramaswamy campaign’s spokeswoman, said that Mr. Swensen had left on good terms and that the move had been “in the process for a while.” Mr. Ramaswamy has repeatedly praised Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner, whom he trails by double digits, often calling him the “best president of the 21st century.”“We love Brian, and we just want him to be happy in life and in his career,” Ms. McLaughlin said, adding, “Everyone saw it very much as not a surprise and also as a positive move for Brian to take a different path.”Mr. Swensen did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Swensen is a longtime Republican consultant. He worked on Ron DeSantis’s campaign for Florida governor in 2018 and served as deputy campaign manager for Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 re-election campaign. He had moved to New Hampshire to focus on the Ramaswamy campaign’s operation there several months ago, long before Mr. Ramaswamy moved his campaign headquarters and full-time staff members from Ohio to Iowa and New Hampshire this month.His previous duties will be taken over by Mike Biundo, who was a former senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and who previously ran Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign. Mr. Biundo joined the Ramaswamy campaign a month and a half ago and has overseen much of the campaign’s New Hampshire operation since he came on board, Ms. McLaughlin said. More